Just the Nicest Couple(30)

The year that they met, they spent the last few days of summer together at a new teacher orientation, Nina running it, Lily attending. I remember how, when Lily would come home at night, all she could talk about was Nina. How nice she was, how funny and easy to talk to. Lily’s first year of teaching was rough. She went into it with the best intentions. By the end of the first day, she’d discovered that learning to be a teacher and being a teacher were two very different things. It was harder than she expected. Burnout was very real that first year. Lily would cry when she came home and more than once, said she wanted to quit. Teenagers are jerks. They’re little assholes. No matter how many times I told her that, it didn’t make a difference. I didn’t have to deal with them every day. They didn’t listen to her. The girls, especially, were mean. She would overhear them, whispering about her and making fun of catty things like her clothes. Somehow Lily persevered. She and Nina commiserated with each other about how hard it was and the asshole kids they had in common. It helped. Nina got her through it. Lily grew stronger, more tenacious. She made the kids respect her somehow. By her second year of teaching, Lily was a pro.

When all this is said and done, Lily and Nina’s friendship will be over. It makes me sad for Lily, for how much she will lose before this is through. But you can’t have a relationship built on secrets and lies.

“Do you know if they have a home security system?” I ask Lily before she leaves. I’ve been up for hours. I got up early to catch up on work from the week. I took one day off and left early another and, even when I’ve been physically there, I haven’t been mentally present. I sat at the kitchen table preparing for a meeting with a focus group on Monday, and then, when Lily woke up, I went back up to the bathroom to shower.

Lily has plans to meet Nina for breakfast at ten. I’ll leave after she does. I’ll drive to Jake and Nina’s house, and then wait a couple blocks from it, until she texts to let me know that Nina has made it to the restaurant to go in. It’s foolproof.

“No, they don’t, or they didn’t last summer when I watched the cat.”

“What about a video doorbell?”

Lily shakes her head. “I don’t know. I went in through the garage. I never used the front door.”

“Okay.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Don’t worry about me. I’ll figure it out. It will be fine.”

“Please, Christian, just don’t get caught,” she says. Moving Jake’s car feels like the finish line at the end of a marathon, if we can just get there. Once his car is far away from Langley Woods, no one will know he was ever there. No one will know he and Lily ever ran into each other that day. For all intents and purposes, Lily was there, but Jake was not.

“I won’t,” I promise her. The stakes are high. This isn’t some high school prank. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t nervous as hell, but the last thing I’m going to do is tell Lily that. Lily is nervous. She’s so worried that she’ll slip up at breakfast and say something she’s not supposed to say. She’s been trying to avoid Nina as best as she can this week. Now she has to talk to her, without interruptions. She’s worried Nina will see right through her and that, even if she doesn’t verbally slip up, that her eyes, her body language will somehow betray her. It took longer than normal for her to pick out something to wear. She was indecisive, doubtful, as if there might be some hidden message, some unspoken truth, a confession in a pair of jeans.

“Deep breaths,” I say to her now, forcing her eyes on mine. We breathe together. In and out. I make her hold her inhales. It helps the oxygen settle in the lungs. We do it three times, and I watch as Lily visibly calms before me. “Just be you. If you start to panic, excuse yourself. Go to the bathroom and breathe.”

Lily nods. She hasn’t talked much about the nausea or the fatigue this week. I guess it’s hard to distinguish between pregnancy nausea and what it must feel like knowing you’ve killed a man. Lily has nightmares. She doesn’t say it. But she makes sounds in the middle of the night, like she’s running, gasping for air, trying to get away. Sometimes she cries, and I think that’s for what she’s done. Lily would never intentionally hurt anyone or anything. I, myself, have been having heartburn. It feels like there’s acid pooling in my abdomen and chest, weakening the abdominal wall, forming a hole. Lily and I are running on adrenaline, but it’s running low.

I can’t wait for this to all be through.

For a long time before we go our separate ways, we hold on to each other.

I take the bag of Lily’s bloody clothes with me when I go, the ones I pulled from the laundry that first night after she told me what happened. For the last few days the bag has hung on the garage doorknob, in full view.

Lily first noticed the bag hanging there last night. “What’s this?” she asked. I said nothing back, though in retrospect I should have just said it was garbage and been done with it, because then Lily wouldn’t have had to look for herself what it was.

Lily asked, “Christian?” when I said nothing, because I couldn’t think of a lie fast enough. My silence roused her curiosity.

“Lily, don’t,” I said as she took the bag from the garage doorknob, untied the handles and looked inside, to see for herself what it was, because I still hadn’t told her. Lily’s face turned white and her body recoiled.